The Golden Ledger
Copyright© 2026 by BillMax
Chapter 11: The Wisdom of Old Walker
North Hollow lay in the Stonewell District, and the district was home to the two biggest settlements on that side of Sterling City.
One was North Hollow itself. The other was Old Town.
As for the biggest outfit in all of Stonewell, that was naturally the Stonewell Iron Works, one of the largest ironworks in the nation.
The neighborhood Caleb Walker was about to visit was, as it happened, one of the earliest rows of company housing the Steel Works had ever put up for its men.
The newly opened fruit emporium stood on the left-hand side as you came into that neighborhood.
It took up four storefronts knocked together into one, better than four thousand square feet all told, and it had a big private icehouse out back.
It had been fitted out like one of the grand dry-goods emporiums downtown and looked mighty impressive.
The only trouble was that hardly anybody was inside, and the emptiness gave away just how bad things were.
The bins held a good deal less fruit than they ought to, and most of the clerks had plainly lost all their pep.
Anyone with eyes could tell the place was fixing to close its doors.
Caleb had brought Tom Tate along to look it over. After four or five years drifting around Sterling City, it was high time he made a real decision.
By chatting with the clerks, he got the owner’s address.
He went round to the house, and it turned out just as he’d guessed: the owner was a young fellow setting up in business for the first time.
Fresh out of college and unwilling to take an ordinary position, he’d been staked by his family to go into business. Hearing a fruit emporium could turn a handsome profit, he’d looked around a few days and plunged right in.
Three months later, the clerks were worn to a frazzle and he’d lost several hundred dollars.
His family had sent word ordering him straight home to work honestly for the family firm.
That way he’d be ready to take it over one day.
To folks like Caleb, a store like that was the chance of a lifetime. In the hands of a rich man’s son, it was nothing but a hobby.
His parents had never expected him to make a cent from it.
It was only meant to let him taste the hardships of starting out, or, bluntly, to teach him what his parents had gone through.
When Caleb knocked, the young man answered from the porch with little patience.
“You want that store? Fine. Two thousand dollars.”
Caleb: “...”
That was an outrageous asking price, and the only reason he could get away with it was that his family truly had money to burn.
So they were in no hurry at all to get a price for the place.
It was a clear case of take it or leave it. The worst that could happen was that he’d lose a few more months’ worth.
Caleb was plumb speechless, but he still had to haggle. He didn’t want such a good opportunity to slip away.
“How about we sit down face to face and talk it over?”
“I’m not free these next few days. We’ll talk after the fifth day of Christmas.”
Bang ... the front door slammed shut. A more whimsical fellow you never did see.
“So, what’s he asking for the place?”
Tom was dying to know too, and Caleb answered, “He wants two thousand dollars flat. I reckon he honestly doesn’t need the money.”
“Two thousand! How can he even ask that?”
Tom shook his head. The store was worth fourteen or sixteen hundred at the very most.
“Let’s head back for now and wait till he’s got time to talk.”
Though he’d said they would wait, the very next day Caleb sent a messenger boy round with a note.
This time he wrote not of buying but of a partnership, and after a couple of notes back and forth, they agreed to meet the following day.
Unless he could talk the price down to around twelve hundred dollars, he wasn’t going to consider it at all.
When he got home and told his wife, Clara, about it, her heart sank.
Two thousand dollars just for the transfer was far more than a little family like theirs could ever afford.
It looked like they would simply have to wait.
But Caleb drew her down to sit beside him on the little settee and said, “Don’t you fret. I’ve really set my heart on that store, and I’ll talk it over some more with the young man when we meet tomorrow...”
He paused a moment, then asked, “Clara, what do you figure a fellow like him is after, running a fruit emporium?”
She truly hadn’t thought about that!
If it were the two of them running the place, it would be to make money, no two ways about it. But going by how that young owner carried himself, money plainly wasn’t the reason.